Posts Tagged ‘Blame’

The blame-game starts early on, – with Adam and Eve. They begin their lives in the Garden of Eden. There, G-D provides for all their needs, in return for which He imposes some commandments. One of them was not to eat from the tree of good and evil.

So now appears the Devil in form of a serpent. He talks Eve into trying the fruit from the forbidden tree. You know the story. She eats of the tree’s fruit and gives a fruit to Adam, who eats it as well.

Soon after that, G-D calls out to them and asks Adam if he ate from the forbidden fruit.

Now we encounter the age-old problem; the inability of most people to acknowledge their guilt forthrightly but, instead, to “scapegoat” someone or something else. Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent.

There is no group in the world that has been the target of as many twisted and ludicrous accusations as the Jews.

Jews were blamed for the death of Jesus. The fact that the Temple high priest was an appointee of the Romans, put there to protect Roman interests, was ignored. The crucifixion was not a Jewish, but a Roman punishment, reserved exclusively for those guilty of crimes against the empire, in accordance with Roman (not Jewish) laws. The actual reason for the execution was the fact that Jesus talked of his kingdom (against Caesar).

Tens of millions of European Christians once believed – and tens of millions of Muslims believe today – that Jews kidnap and slaughter non-Jewish children before Passover to use their blood for baking matzo.

Vast numbers of Europeans believed that Jews caused the Plague.

Much of France believed that the near-bankruptcy brought on by its failure to build the Panama Canal was caused by the Jews.

The great majority of Arabs and tens of millions of Muslims believe that the Jews (i.e., Israel) are responsible for the poverty, tyranny, absence of freedom and brutality that pervade the Arab world.

Lately, Jews have even been blamed for shark attacks in Egypt.

So, why do the nations always blame the Jews? Why do the nations hate Israel?

There is a very simple explanation to this question. The Jewish people are physical proof of the existence of G-d. The nations hate G-D. Because they hate G-D, they also hate his word, the Torah, and his people, the Jews. After all, there is nothing quite so upsetting to the post-modern ear, as to hear of a universal standard of truth or a “chosen people.” It is this very fact which causes so many to hate the Jews. In this modern age of computers and cell phones we tend to forget and deny the concept of Creation. People have begun to believe that they are the creators and able to control what happens in the world. Even among the Jewish People there are those who prefer not to think about G-D. The very idea of a Jewish State – especially one located in the ancient Land of Israel – forces even atheists to take notice.

Jews remind the sinful world of G-D’s rule, and of His laws. People today hate these ideas. Thus we see that anti-Semitism, at its heart, is anti-God and anti-Torah.

However, there’s only so long we can get away with putting the blame on someone else. Eventually, G-D himself will force the nations of world to face the consequences of their behavior.